After going after thousands accused of sharing video games in the UK, lawyers Davenport Lyons are now branching out into other areas. This week sees them start going after those it accuses of sharing the movie "Army Fuckers", hardcore gay porn featuring 'farm boys' and Gestapo officers. Accusing the wrong people this time could prove very costly indeed.

The file-sharing media went crazy recently when UK lawyers Davenport Lyons admitted it wrongly identified married pensioners who, they claim were illegally sharing a video game. The lawyers publicly apologized over the fallibility of their evidence, with highly respected consumer magazine Which? going on record to say that “hundreds” of people may have been incorrectly identified and threatened.

The latest development is one that file-sharing commentators have quietly been expecting. While some 40-60% of those threatened over video game sharing in the UK appear to pay up, there are other ways of increasing this amount substantially via social leverage. Unsurprisingly, Davenport Lyons are now going down this road which is likely maximize compliance rates.

According to recipients of fresh letters this weekend, the lawyers have now expanded into movie ‘protection’ – a gay hardcore porn movie to be precise. Set on a farm in the former Czechoslovakia, Gestapo officers apparently hand out ‘forced’ punishment in ‘Army Fuckers‘, a 2006 movie originally released by Dutch porn outfit Dream Logistics BV, on the ‘Eurocreme‘ label.

Strangely, however, Dream Logistics BV aren’t the rights holder anymore, or the ones that hired Davenport Lyons. It appears the new rights holder is German anti-piracy company DigiProtect, who managed to get this High Court order for disclosure of alleged file-sharer’s identities, based on evidence provided by lesser-known anti-piracy tracking company DigiRights Solution, of Darmstadt, Germany. Indeed, DigiRights Solution GmbH appear to have no obvious Internet presence.

Davenport Lyons are demanding £500 compensation, plus the costs from the ISP for disclosing the alleged infringer’s personal details. Recipients of the letter are given 21 days to pay up and are threatened with huge court costs and damages if they don’t, which is no different to all the other threats made by Davenport on other media they ‘protect’. It is worth noting that of a claimed 25,000 threats of legal action, no more than half a dozen have gone to court and of those, none were contested, meaning that Davenport Lyons won default judgments on them all. There is no evidence to suggest that anyone has ever contested a case with many people simply refusing to pay up.

Those accused and deciding to settle are asked to sign an undertaking that they will never infringe copyright on any media owned by DigiProtect in the future, which might be easier than you think – considering the number of titles they own the rights to. As previously pointed out by P2P-Blog, DigiProtect seem to be acquiring the ‘P2P Rights’ to many titles (including those of US porn company ‘Evil Angel’) and gathering their money via P2P tracking and subsequent legal threats.

However, most worrying is the leaked contract between DigiProtect and Evil Angel, as it contains the following paragraph, which one would believe applies to these UK cases too:

To achieve the purpose outlined in clause 1, LICENSOR grants DIGIPROTECT the exclusive right to make the movies listed in Appendix 1 worldwide available to the public via remote computer networks, so-called peer-2-peer and internet file sharing networks such as e-Donkey, Kazaa, Bitorrent, etc. for the duration of this agreement

This destroys claims that these actions are for strict anti-piracy purposes, this is a clearly a money-making operation, designed from the ground-up.

Since most people will want to avoid lining the pockets of DigiProtect and friends, here is a list of titles that include those that appear to be now owned by DigiProtect and ripe for IP harvesting.

Although not DigiProtect titles, the eagle-eyed reader will notice the inclusion on this list of Dream Pinball 3D, Colin McRae Rally and Call of Juarez – all titles targeted by Davenport Lyons. According to the list, DigiProtect also owns the rights to Atari’s dire ‘Alone in the Dark 5′.

Of course, we live in a world that has become much more liberal in recent years, so the stigma attached to porn of all flavors has diminished significantly. However, the damage that will be done to a family will be considerable if someone is incorrectly accused of sharing porn that doesn’t ‘fit’ the acceptance levels in that household.

There is a firestorm coming, there can be little doubt, and a simple apology from Davenport Lyons following an incorrect accusation won’t be enough.